Disappearing act: advanced technology cuts back on paper use.

Michael A. McCreary, CPM, was drowning--drowning in a sea of paperwork and file cabinets that had overtaken his office space as his business had expanded. He knew he needed to do something before his "paper problem" got further out of control.

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"It was overwhelming,"

The solution for McCreary, president of McCreary Realty Management Inc., in Marietta, Ga., was to create a paperless office by implementing technology that would drastically reduce reliance on paper files and documents--a solution he said has allowed him to save space, money and time, and make his office more efficient.

"Now, we're much more integrated," McCreary said. "We're much more collaborative. It has allowed us to manage more communities with fewer people [on staff]. It improves the bottom line, and it improves the quality of life in the office."

Companies with paperless offices are entirely or mostly automated: All their information--including communications, records, documentation and financials--is stored and transferred electronically, eliminating the need for paper, or at least reducing the flow of paper from desk, to copier, to file cabinet and beyond.

Professional industries, like banking, have adopted the automated document approach in recent years in order to cut back on the overwhelming amount of paper used to operate their businesses. Real estate companies are following suit, investing in intricate software in some cases and simple hardware in other cases to reduce paper use and streamline their workflow.

"We're getting to the culture where people don't feel the need to do everything with paper," said Jay Irwin, an industry principal for real estate, construction and home building for SAP, which provides collaborative business solutions. "More and more we're going to see people adopt [paperless initiatives], just as they adopted online banking in the last five years."

DROWNING IN PAPER

Defining a paperless office and determining whether businesses can ever truly operate without paper are hot topics for debate in the business world today. Larry Newcomer, director of marketing for Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions, an advanced property management software company, distinguished paperless offices from what he called "paper flowless" offices.